“We have the capacity to produce over 10M COVID-19 tests per week globally”

Thermo Fisher Scientific, the world leader in serving science, is continuously working to expand global capacity and capabilities across its leading pharma services network to support customers in government, industry and academia as they accelerate development and production of COVID-19 vaccines, therapies and other treatments.

- Dr Manbeena Chawla

The company is now supporting over 200 projects globally. The company is also supporting multiple vaccine programmes globally that are in or entering human clinical trials, providing critical capacity and expertise that has accelerated development and readiness by months. In addition to its work on COVID-19-related vaccines and therapies, the company continues to ensure that patients undergoing clinical trials continue to receive the critical medicines they need during this crisis. Amit Chopra, Managing Director, India and Middle East, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Mumbai recently spoke to BioSpectrum about the company’s initiatives to counter COVID-19, particularly in India. Edited excerpts;

How is Thermo Fisher Scientific expanding its diagnostic capacity to fight the global pandemic?

At Thermo Fisher Scientific, our mission is to enable our customers to make the world healthier, cleaner, and safer. Globally, we saw a significant increase in the spread of the virus and our customers were getting inundated. As reliable partners, our primary objective was to scale our offerings to enable them to better navigate through this pandemic. We have been actively involved in understanding the structure of the virus, developing new diagnostic tests, providing personal protective equipment, reagents, and other laboratory essential instruments, to providing tools for vaccine research and development, clinical trials and even manufacturing some of the therapeutics. TaqPath COVID-19 Combo Kits were one of the first tests to receive Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and are being extensively used across the world.